How about zero tolerance to lack of political will?
The Home Minister of India tells you after serial terror blasts — not the first or the second or third but umpteenth ones claiming a whole lot of lives — that the explosions were not due to Intelligence failure. The projected Prime Minister of India is more candid the next day. He says it is not possible for the Government to plug terror blasts. Maharashtra’s Chief Minister goes on record two days later to say giving the Home portfolio to his alliance partner NCP was a huge mistake. The Prime Minister, as usual, expresses grief and nothing else. The Congress chairperson decides it is time to pay Mumbai a visit.
Should we read the writing on the wall? That our political masters have washed their hands off their responsibility to provide a safe country to the citizens? That the political will to curb terror is absent? Or, for that matter, that the Government is totally clueless, if not unconcerned, about how to translate its zero tolerance claims into reality?
Indeed, the recent Mumbai blasts showed how it was “this day that year” in India as usual. The alarming part is everyone knows the next blast is just round the corner, perhaps in Delhi this time. The metro rail service, we are told, is vulnerable, so are buses, marketplaces, malls and all other crowded areas. No one tells us we are safe anywhere, in fact the drill is to make you aware how unsafe you are everywhere. And the confidence that should ideally flow from the portals of power to the common man is in shreds, much like those bodies heaped over each other in a dreadful mangle in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar.
One wonders why a Home Minister could make such a statement which was so openly and unnecessarily a passing-the-buck exercise. If it was not cluelessness, what else was it that a home-grown terror outfit (they are saying it is SIMI) manages to plan and execute the blasts under the nose of the Intelligence operatives and just one day after the blasts, the Government actually gets to the bottom of the operation, raiding places as far away from Mumbai as Ranchi?
Even if one were to negate the “can’t control” contention by Rahul Gandhi as a naive announcement by a politically callow youth, and dismiss Chief Minister Chavan’s outburst against Sharad Pawar’s NCP as a move on the political chess board, nothing can actually justify the fact that our representatives in politics are never really bothered about the lives lost in such attacks. So be it Chidambaram, Rahul or Chavan — there is no one who is sincerely working on safety issues of the common man.
Moving from political callousness, one wonders what is it that keeps India on the terror boil 24x7? Why have we not been able to plug terror like America has done on its vast territory since 9/11? Why can’t we not hang a puny little Kasab, when the US can bombard alien territory, kill Osama bin Laden (without any trial) and then dump his body into the sea? Did America not stand up to that chunk of so-called world opinion which favoured Osama? Why can’t we deal with Kasab similarly? We are told keeping him alive is the democratic thing to do. Even the US is a democracy, isn’t it? So why is it that we, as a nation, are forced to remember that it is Kasab’s birthday (13/7) and in such a macabre fashion?
Suffice it to say, India neither has the political will nor the wherewithal to combat terror. Home-grown terror outfits like SIMI and IM will enrol many more cadres while our polity continues to peg on appeasement votes, till our citizenry allows zero tolerance to become 100 per cent tolerance not just at the political level but also at the social level where taking it in your stride has become a norm. It is, perhaps, only in India that a ruling party politician can make irresponsible statements like “Osamaji” and actually get away unscathed by public fury.
Just after the Mumbai blasts, people at a party in Delhi sat down to discuss what was happening to the nation. The unanimous opinion over pizza slices was that we in India will continue to be victims of what they called the “cheap life” syndrome. Really, life in India is cheap, very cheap — in other words dispensable. Unlike America, where every common life is valued and accounted for. One does not really know how sincere the US Government is in this arena but it does all it takes to keep the perception alive — not just among its people but the world over.
We call Americans crazy and their nation a country living in collective fear psychosis. We make fun of them stacking up prior to any disaster warning. We are overly critical of their paranoiac frisking at airports. But really, if that is what it takes to not die in recurrent bomb blasts, we Indians are willing for the makeover. At least then you don’t have to tell the frisking guards at malls or the X-ray machine watchers at the metro rail stations that they should be more vigilant and attentive. At least then, we will be a safe nation.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, July 17, 2011
Should we read the writing on the wall? That our political masters have washed their hands off their responsibility to provide a safe country to the citizens? That the political will to curb terror is absent? Or, for that matter, that the Government is totally clueless, if not unconcerned, about how to translate its zero tolerance claims into reality?
Indeed, the recent Mumbai blasts showed how it was “this day that year” in India as usual. The alarming part is everyone knows the next blast is just round the corner, perhaps in Delhi this time. The metro rail service, we are told, is vulnerable, so are buses, marketplaces, malls and all other crowded areas. No one tells us we are safe anywhere, in fact the drill is to make you aware how unsafe you are everywhere. And the confidence that should ideally flow from the portals of power to the common man is in shreds, much like those bodies heaped over each other in a dreadful mangle in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar.
One wonders why a Home Minister could make such a statement which was so openly and unnecessarily a passing-the-buck exercise. If it was not cluelessness, what else was it that a home-grown terror outfit (they are saying it is SIMI) manages to plan and execute the blasts under the nose of the Intelligence operatives and just one day after the blasts, the Government actually gets to the bottom of the operation, raiding places as far away from Mumbai as Ranchi?
Even if one were to negate the “can’t control” contention by Rahul Gandhi as a naive announcement by a politically callow youth, and dismiss Chief Minister Chavan’s outburst against Sharad Pawar’s NCP as a move on the political chess board, nothing can actually justify the fact that our representatives in politics are never really bothered about the lives lost in such attacks. So be it Chidambaram, Rahul or Chavan — there is no one who is sincerely working on safety issues of the common man.
Moving from political callousness, one wonders what is it that keeps India on the terror boil 24x7? Why have we not been able to plug terror like America has done on its vast territory since 9/11? Why can’t we not hang a puny little Kasab, when the US can bombard alien territory, kill Osama bin Laden (without any trial) and then dump his body into the sea? Did America not stand up to that chunk of so-called world opinion which favoured Osama? Why can’t we deal with Kasab similarly? We are told keeping him alive is the democratic thing to do. Even the US is a democracy, isn’t it? So why is it that we, as a nation, are forced to remember that it is Kasab’s birthday (13/7) and in such a macabre fashion?
Suffice it to say, India neither has the political will nor the wherewithal to combat terror. Home-grown terror outfits like SIMI and IM will enrol many more cadres while our polity continues to peg on appeasement votes, till our citizenry allows zero tolerance to become 100 per cent tolerance not just at the political level but also at the social level where taking it in your stride has become a norm. It is, perhaps, only in India that a ruling party politician can make irresponsible statements like “Osamaji” and actually get away unscathed by public fury.
Just after the Mumbai blasts, people at a party in Delhi sat down to discuss what was happening to the nation. The unanimous opinion over pizza slices was that we in India will continue to be victims of what they called the “cheap life” syndrome. Really, life in India is cheap, very cheap — in other words dispensable. Unlike America, where every common life is valued and accounted for. One does not really know how sincere the US Government is in this arena but it does all it takes to keep the perception alive — not just among its people but the world over.
We call Americans crazy and their nation a country living in collective fear psychosis. We make fun of them stacking up prior to any disaster warning. We are overly critical of their paranoiac frisking at airports. But really, if that is what it takes to not die in recurrent bomb blasts, we Indians are willing for the makeover. At least then you don’t have to tell the frisking guards at malls or the X-ray machine watchers at the metro rail stations that they should be more vigilant and attentive. At least then, we will be a safe nation.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, July 17, 2011
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